XX Horror

The Feminine and the Horrific

What’s Up: Here is What is Going On

Caveats

This game is PURIST. People are fragile. The opposition is huge. Victory consists of protecting people you love from the horrible things you are forced to learn and to do for their good.

The best you can hope for is the ending of Ramsay Campbell’s The Darkest Part of the Woods: a circle of fragile inhabitants of an old-age home, looking into the edge of the neighbouring forest, day after day, keeping watch for any sign that an ancient evil might return, with the thin hope that they will be able to keep their community from messing around with things they shouldn’t mess with.

Deal with that.

4 is my ideal per session, 5 is my absolute limit

But rotation will bring everyone into the spotlight. Eventually.

Meta-Game

The Report: Knowing When Investigation is Finished

So you get your Investigation Pools refreshed and win some downtime when a crime is solved. A vast conspiracy and occult nightmare is unfolding around you. But you make it through one crime at a time. This is a metagame thing: when the players have solved the crime, we move on to a new crime and a new document. Even if this or that character does not have the complete picture, the GROUP has solved the crime and its time for the next step towards madness, despair, and doom adventure.

In keeping track of the investigation I will be maintaining the Report. And the Report will be updated to indicate if the crime has been SOLVED, if the investigation is UNSOLVED because the investigators have made no progress or are lost in the weeds, or if it is OPEN because some progress has been made but there is lots of work to do.

Example:

Status: SOLVED

Victim: Phil HughesPerpetrator: 3 members of the Walsh gangLocation: Aymes’ Guns & Ammunition WorksMotive: Get information, eliminate person who could identify them, anger at being discoveredOpportunity: The victim involved himself, followed them to an enclosed space at nighttime, stumbled into their handsMeans: [TBA]Mythos Angle: [TBA]

Normally, the conclusion of an investigation requires discovery of the Means. I didn’t insist on that this time. But in the metagame — refreshing Pools by completing investigation of the crime — players will have to specify the Means and Mythos Angle before they can close the case. Think of it as a game of clue: Mr. Krebbinder did it with an Etheric Ray Pistol in the City Morgue, with the added Mythos Angle of with Help from Leng-style Sorcery or with the aid of a discorporate ghost.

Players are encouraged to find out the Means and the Mythos Angle of this crime before Document 4 shows up in your lives. But don’t feel compelled to do so.